Conscious Suffering

I've been watching TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks since they started posting them online. Tonight I stumbled upon a remarkable talk that both summarizes and confirms most of what I've been posting about these last few months — that peace springs from being fully present in the moment, and that our troubles stem from identifying with our past and future. Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor explains in her TED talk that when she had a stroke, she consciously observed the total shutdown of the left hemisphere of her brain, and with it all her cares, fears, anxieties, and troubles evaporated. It is an amazing 18 minutes, well worth your time to watch:


I think it is really neat that I watched that video the same night as I read a fascinating article on conscious suffering. As I've written about many times on this blog, we need to allow our emotions to be, and we need to also allow those emotions to fully manifest themselves. Fully experiencing our emotions is a major component of our grief recovery.

Yes, I understand that this is a scary prospect. It requires a leap of faith. Faith that we will survive the experience, faith that we will not be overwhelmed, faith that we will not be destroyed. I took that risk, and I can attest to the healing power of the experience.

Assuming that you're willing to take the risk, it helps a great deal to have a good guide through the process. The process of conscious suffering is simple, but it is not easy. I'll quote a few excerpts from Chris' article entitled Thoughts On Conscious Suffering, and I highly encourage you to read it in its entirety. Here are the four key points:

I want to share the peace this approach has brought me with others. Thus, in this article, I'm going to describe the process of conscious suffering as I understand it. I hope it's as helpful and transformative for you as it's been for me.

As I said earlier, when you start experiencing an intense, uncomfortable emotion, if you have the time and space, find a place to sit alone and undistracted. Begin to breathe rhythmically and deeply as the sensation moves through you. If this process is frightening and painful, as it may be if you haven't been through it before, keep your mind focused on the four guideposts I discuss below. These are intended to give you comfort and perspective as you immerse yourself fully in your experience.

1. Your suffering is finite. One of the reasons we'll usually do anything to avoid intense feeling is the worry that, if we fully allow it to be, the feeling will never end. We may be entirely consumed by our rage or fear, and lose control of our actions or permanently curl up into a whimpering fetal position. Thus, when strong sensations arise in our bodies, we tend to numb ourselves with distracting activities like watching TV or diving headlong into our work.

The process of conscious suffering requires a leap of faith. It requires the belief that there is a finite amount of pain, or difficult emotion, trapped in your body, and that you can draw nearer to the end of suffering by letting yourself fully experience your pain. There’s no way, in all honesty, to know in advance that your anguish won't last forever. All you can do is look to the experience of others who have transcended their pain through conscious suffering, and trust that you can bring yourself closer to the same peace.

2. Remove your labels. Much of the suffering we experience around "difficult emotions" occurs because we label those emotions as negative or unwanted. We learn early in life that the tension and heat in our bodies we call "anger," "anxiety" and so on are bad things we should avoid if possible. Thus, when those sensations come up, we tend to fight them, whether by tightening parts of our bodies to choke off the feelings, shaming ourselves for "getting too emotional," or distracting ourselves from our experience. This resistance can be physically painful and add to our discomfort.

To release our resistance and let our sensations be, it's helpful to peel off the labels we put on our emotions and simply view them as forms of energy arising in our bodies. There’s nothing good or bad about this energy — it's just a substance that moves through us and passes away. When we let go of our judgments about the way we feel, it’s easier to allow our emotions to arise and subside.

3. Let go of the need to explain. When we experience intense sensation, often our first impulse is to look for a reason — whether in ourselves or the world — for the feeling's existence. From a young age, we're conditioned to believe we must be able to justify or explain our feelings. Otherwise, we must repress our emotions. For example, some of us learn early on that, if we can't convincingly explain why we're angry, we have "no right to be angry," or that we aren't allowed to "bother" our parents by crying unless there's a real emergency.

Our search for an explanation for our feelings usually takes the form of looking for someone to blame. If we're "feeling bad," our instincts tell us, someone or something must be responsible. Some of us blame ourselves — perhaps calling ourselves weak if we feel afraid, or overly irritable if we're angry. Others blame the outside world — for instance, perhaps they blame their parents for doing an inadequate job of raising them and saddling them with rage and guilt; or maybe they blame their spouses or children for being too demanding.

Ultimately, the only thing blame accomplishes, other than creating more conflict in the world, is to divert your attention from what you're experiencing. When you become lost in thought about who is responsible for your suffering, your attention drifts into the past — to what others may have done to "make" you feel this way — and you lose consciousness of your experience in the present...

4. Your sensations can't kill you. Particularly in our early journeys into conscious suffering, we tend to worry that fully experiencing what's going on in our bodies may harm or even destroy us. This is one reason many of us rush to the doctor or psychiatrist to medicate our strong emotions away — we worry that our bodies can't survive that sort of intensity and will fall apart under the strain.

However, on an unconscious level, we're already experiencing the sensations we're afraid of. Conscious suffering, as its name suggests, only brings those unpleasant sensations into your conscious awareness. We're only unaware of what we're feeling most of the time because we spend much of our lives looking for ways to divert our attention from our experience. If the energy flowing through our bodies could kill us, it would have done so long ago.

In reality, focusing our attention on the uncomfortable sensations in our bodies, and allowing them to pass away, doesn't hurt us — in fact, it leads to a richer experience of life. As we release our pain through conscious suffering, we become more open to and able to appreciate the rich and varied sensations life offers us.

Debriding Emotional Wounds

debridement

surgical removal of foreign material and dead tissue from a wound in order to prevent infection and promote healing

One really neat aspect of blogging that I wasn't aware of when I started this Grief Recovery Tools project is that I would meet really neat people through my writing. By registering as a Spousal Bereavement Expert on SelfGrowth.com, a great website whose mission is "to provide informative, quality Self Improvement and Natural Health information to help people improve their lives," there have been many invitations to join other Expert networks. One such Expert is Elizabeth Bohorquez, and she has written some amazing articles that I'd like to share with you. Here's the first one. Enjoy!

Inside My Critical Nature & Being

"Blessed is the man who can take bricks thrown at him & build a sound foundation"....Tom Pryor

Related SpokenWords, Thoughts & Emotional MindState - captious, carping, caviling, cavillous, censorious, critic, faultfinding, hypercritical, overcritical, discerning, discriminating, penetrating; finicky, fussy, particular; belittling, demeaning, disparaging, humbling, lowering.

Over the past few days I found myself journaling about criticism that tend to initiate conflicts...self-delivered & delivered by others. I learned from one of my patients that Gemini was in retrograde or something like that, meaning that communication is off. Of course this made me feel better immediately, knowing I had little to do with all the criticism floating around me.

Automatic writing or journaling is very helpful for me personally & I often recommend it to my patients as well, even if they balk about writing. The balking is usually fear-related. Yes, writing is committing ink to paper....or at least it was in the past. I still journal with real paper & pen. It helps to slow the mind down, allowing the images or ideas to form.

After so many years of working in this field, I'm still amazed at how the subconscious mind will cooperate with emotional reframing & healing. Sometimes all I really need is a good metaphor to manage my heavy-air days.

As I broached the subject of critical words, here are some things that came off of my pen....delivered directly from my subconscious mind.

1. Criticism can be a good thing, even if the person delivering it does not mean it as such.....myself included. Of course we are our biggest critic. That's no secret. I'm also well aware of constructive vs destructive criticism. However, I often have a problem with accepting the term constructive criticism, especially when it is delivered in what appears to be a destructive way. Or, is this just a matter of Gemini in retrograde?

2. It doesn't really matter if the criticism is constructive or destructive, nor if Gemini is having a problem or not. I can benefit from all of it... & if there is plenty of it around, it follows that I would could have a wealth of benefits, if I just did what I needed to do. Hmmm....

3. The subconscious mind often connects things in strange ways in order to make it's point. I was brought back to my time of nursing in Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center & to the memory of debriding wounds. Wounds cannot heal properly until the dead or infected tissue is removed, often speck by speck. The job of the wound care nurse is to utilize different techniques to achieve this. However, it cannot be done all at once. It is a process, sometimes taking months, depending on the depth or complexity of the wound. The metaphor is forming....

4. Emotional wounds are similar to physical ones. They must also be debrided. Criticism is like pouring acid into certain emotional wounds. Anyone who has experienced this phenomena is certainly familiar with the combination of physical & emotional pain that results. I know that I am....

5. Many of us were born into a very critical environments, thus making us highly sensitive to critical words. Simple words, even if delivered in a constructive way, can be very frightening & debilitating. As a child I had no power & had to develop ways to survive this type of environment, but as an adult I do have power & so it is my responsibility to debride mywounds so I can heal & continue my self-growth.

6. Managing stress is not the same as debriding wounds. While it is very important to eat correctly, meditate, exercise & practice mindfulness, if I truly want to heal & manage my emotions at higher levels, I must be willing to cleanse & debride my wounds.

7. Emotional wounds are debrided through awareness & timely releasing. When criticism is painful, there is a wound that needs to be cleaned. The process is simple, but not always easy. I remember that when treating a patient's wound, I'd often tell them, Yes, it hurts & no, it won't hurt forever. I remember....the patient learns to bring his/her attention to the breath & to ride it, just like riding gentle waves in the sea. The physical pain begins to move to the side & then diminishes. The patient learns to see/sense the wound healing from the bottom up.

8. The same holds true for emotional healing. As the wound heals from the bottom up, the mind will often send fragments of the debris. These may be in the form of old memories or emotions that need to be released. Opening & healing is now in process...

More About Criticism & Connected Conflicts...

There are other things that are helpful for me to remember. First off the bat, conflicts & criticism are inevitable, as long as I'm willing or interested in standing up for what I believe are my rights or beliefs.

It does help to simply the actual word conflict or criticism. The subconscious meaning of words can be so powerful as to disallow any scrutiny because of the attached, automatic mind fear patterns. Conflicts are simply two sets of demands, goals or motives that appear to be incompatible. I must remind myself that I deal with conflicts all day long. Some might be small & I may not even label these as conflicts, but they are nevertheless. This is a very important awareness because as I view them under the conflict or criticism label, I'll come to know that I have been developing excellent resolution skills for a very long time, some actually from early childhood.

Conflicts & accompanying criticisms come in sizes including small, medium & large. Some are more uncomfortable than others. The more uncomfortable tend to be connected to deeper wounds or more sensitive areas in the subconscious mind. Keep in mind that these are very valuable as debriding tools.

The conflicts or critiques I play in the theater of my mind tend to be more frequent & often larger. It's important for me not to forget that these also effect my body physiology & bring more debris to old, deep wounds. Engaging the thought process in awfulizing is a very bad habit & one that can have serious physical & emotional consequences.

This happens to be one of my habits & so I've asked my own subconscious mind to wake me when I'm doing this, so I have the opportunity to break the habit & release the stress. At the same time, I'll take advantage of the self-criticism & do a very more steps to debride any old wounds.

Simple Metaphors for Managing Criticisms...

Here's one I utilize for myself quite often. When someone is critical of me, I change those words in my mind. They are critical of something I've done. This simply means that we have a difference of opinion about this something. That is easier for me to accept & curbs the production of stress chemicals. Remember, I was born into a very critical environment, so I am very sensitive.

Next, in the theater of my mind, I take the "something" & rinse it off under my very beautiful golden faucet. I want to remove the emotional component that was part of the delivery. This way, I am free to examine the "something" & decide if I want to change anything about my part or my beliefs. I may do this immediately, or decide to wait. Then, I might simply thank the other person for bringing this to my attention & to let them know that I'll think about it. This moves me out of a defensive position, into one of maturity & self-control.

Elizabeth Bohorquez, RN, C.Ht is a Clinical Medical Hypnotherapist, who works in the area of loss & healing. Her websites offer many articles & discussion on the subject, as well as complimentary mp3 downloads.

Survival Breakdown

I've always had an interest in human psychology and why we as humans do what we do. Once I became a widower, this interest only intensified. Grieving is not a uniquely human experience by any means, but it is certainly one of the most intense, if not the most intense, human experience. As the intensity of my grieving picked up, I started consuming books about psychology and grief. I wanted to know: Why do we grieve? Why pain? What is the purpose of grieving? How long will this go on? My thought process at the time was, if I can understand why I am going through this living hell, then I can find the Grief Recovery Tools I need to help get me out.

While I was in Tampa last month, we talked about the three primary drivers of all human action:

1. Survival


2. Reproduction


3. Survival of our offspring

These three desires fuel all our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Now that our spouse is dead, we have had to confront our primary drive, Survival, and acknowledge that no, we don't all survive, and, more to the point, this drive for survival will ultimately end in failure. Yet we are still driven to survive. It's like that joke — Despite the high cost of living, it remains popular ;-)

I have previously mentioned The Sedona Method, a super-important book that I feel strongly every widow/er should have in their Grief Recovery Toolbox. This book will lead you through the maze of your emotions and help you to release them all. Big promise, yes, and it certainly delivers.


The Sedona Method further breaks down our primary drive for survival into three primary desires:

1. Wanting Approval


2. Wanting Control


3. Wanting Security

It probably helps if you are able to visualize these three and understand their significance. In the book, they use a tree diagram that they call "the imaginary tree of limitation." Here's how they describe it [pp 181-183]:

The Anatomy of an Imaginary Tree of Limitation

Imagine that you are lost amid a dense forest of imaginary limitation. What's the anatomy of these trees? At the subtlest level, they are made up of atoms, which, in our world, we call "thoughts." Moving toward a little more density and structure, the leaves on this imaginary tree represent your individual feelings. The branches represent the nine emotional states. The trunk and the roots spreading out laterally from the bottom of the trunk represent wanting approval and wanting to control, as well as their opposites. The taproot, growing straight downward into the soil, represents wanting security and its opposite. Lastly, the soil represents wanting to be separate and its opposite, wanting to be one. (See illustration)

If we wanted to fell these imaginary trees of limitation and clear a path through this imaginary forest by releasing, there are several ways we might go about it. We could let go of one atom at a time by working to change our thinking. But that would take a long time. We could be even more active and proceed by plucking off individual leaves (feelings). But leaves tend to grow back. Or we could start pruning the branches (the nine emotional states). If you've ever pruned a tree, however, you know that branches often come back healthier than before. We would only start making significant progress once we began chopping at the trunk and lateral roots (the wanting approval and wanting to control). Of course, many trees have grown back from stumps even after some of their roots were removed.

There is not much certainty of eliminating this imaginary tree until we set about severing its taproot: wanting security and its opposite, wanting death. Now remember, in the forest of limitation where you're lost, every tree is imaginary. All limitation is imaginary.

At any point in this process, you can get a glimpse of what lies beyond the trees, the background of perfection and infinity that supports yet is unaffected by the forest. So, allow for the possibility as you use the Sedona Method that big chunks of the forest itself can fall away. Often, when you least expect it, you'll let go of big chunks of your imaginary limitation quite spontaneously. This will happen more and more frequently as you release at the level of the four basic wants.

The entire book is The guide for releasing and letting go of your emotions. Now that I am re-reading it, I can see how well it dovetails with Vipassana meditation and Eastern Thought in general. Why my interest in Eastern Thought? Simple: in the West, all advice to the bereaved is, "learn to live with your pain — it will be with you for the rest of your life." In the East, the advice is different: "Learn to let go of all your emotions, needs, and desires, and experience real peace."

It should be clear which advice I chose. You do not have to feel this pain forever. You can let it go. And it is easier than you think.

Letting Go Emotionally

One of the more difficult aspects of grieving in the first 6-12 months is figuring out how to grieve. We know we are supposed to do it, we feel terrible, and it can be a huge struggle to get out of bed in the morning. Life seems meaningless, and yet we're supposed to get some energy and do this thing called "grieve." What the heck is that? How does one go about it? What is the point? Why the effort?

For me, I think it was about month thirteen that I was reading How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies. I talked a little bit about this in my post about letting go. Around this time, I was beginning to understand that my emotional energy was still largely caught up in thoughts about Deb, and that I had no emotional energy for anything else. In her book, Therèse Rando explains that this is a normal result of having invested so much of my emotional energy into my marriage for so many years. Now that Deb was dead, that emotional energy had nowhere to go, and it was chewing me up inside.

It was helpful for me to read the following [pp 230-232]:

You also have to change your emotional attachment to and investment in your loved one to reflect the reality that, despite your intense wishes to the contrary, he is dead and will no longer be able to interact with you as he did in the past. No matter how much you need him, nor how much you are determined that things in your life will not change, the fact of the matter is that your loved one no longer can give you what he did previously. He will no longer be able to return your emotional investment in him. As a result, over time you are going to have to change your emotional investment in him to accommodate this fact.

This is not a betrayal. It does not mean that you no longer love the deceased or that you will forget him. The relationship is altered, to be sure, but it always will exist in a special place in your heart and in your mind. What it does mean is that you modify your ongoing emotional investment in and attachment to him as a living person who can return your investment-you must let go of being connected to him as if he were still alive. The emotional energy that went into your relationship with him gradually must be detached from him, since he can no longer return it, and in time it must be channeled elsewhere where it can be returned for your emotional satisfaction.

...

The most crucial task in grief is this change in relationship with the person who died. It is the untying of the ties that bind you to your lost loved one. Again, it must be stressed that this does not mean that the deceased is forgotten or not loved. Rather, it means that the emotional energy that you had invested in the deceased is readjusted to allow you to direct it towards others who can reciprocate it in an ongoing fashion for your emotional satisfaction.

...

It is not an easy task to withdraw emotional energy and investment from someone you love. It takes a great deal of time and effort. It means that all of your ties to that person-your needs for and your feelings, thoughts, memories, hopes, expectations, and dreams about that person and your relationship with him-all must be brought up and revived [emphasis mine]. Then each one must be reviewed and felt. In this way the emotional charge is loosened or defused. You may still have the thought and memory of each one, but the emotional feeling accompanying it lessens in intensity. Gradually, over time, you do not feel the accompanying feelings any more, or at least not the way you did when they were intense and vibrant, kept alive by the ongoing, reciprocal relationship you had with your loved one before death.

After reading this, I finally felt like someone had finally adequately explained to me just what the heck I was supposed to be doing with my time in grief. I remember feeling like a key had turned in a lock somehow, that the door to a grief framework had finally been opened. I didn't look forward to the remaining grief work to be done, but I knew that once I walked through that door, I would be one step closer to that peace I was searching for.

The Rollercoaster III

In my last post, Dr Paul explained in his book MindOS™ - "The Operating System of the Human Mind" that anger and anxiety are the roots of our poor self-esteem as widow/ers, and that the remedy is to be assertive, face our fears, and work to get our needs met. There are several ways to respond to both anger and anxiety, and in this last post of the series, I'll explain the results of each.

Anger is neither good nor bad — it is a signal that something is wrong — our needs are not being met. Dr Paul explains that there are only three possible responses for anger [pg 161]:



One response is to make no decision and sink into depression; in other words, do nothing to get our needs met. A second response is to act aggressively to get our needs met at someone else's expense in a win/lose scenario. Acting aggressively will cause ourselves more hurt, which will cause more anger, resulting in more aggression in a vicious cycle. The last response is to be assertive and work out win/win solutions to meeting our needs. This is the path to maturity and adds to our well-being.

Likewise for anxiety, there are only three possible responses [pg 183]:



Again, anxiety is a signal that something is wrong — we are harbouring fear. One way to respond to this signal is to be impulsive or avoidant and is the passive way to respond. This includes actions like:

• over-eating


• over-spending


• addictions


• drug abuse


• workaholism


• being busy just to be busy

Another response is to act like a victim and think that the world is out to get you (win/lose). This includes regret about the past and wishing that you controlled the uncontrollable (like wanting to have life return to the way it was when our spouse was alive). Essentially, this means trying to dump your anxiety into someone else's boundary instead of working to resolve it yourself. In widowhood, this commonly manifests by thinking "if only I had done something different, my spouse wouldn't have died and everything would be better now." When we verbalize this to others, we're trying to unload our anxiety onto them, and we lose their support. This causes further loss when they pull away from us, resulting in another vicious cycle.

The way out of anxiety is through courage by facing our fears. When we do what is right even when we are afraid to do so, this restores our confidence and builds our trust in ourselves and others. It is the other half of building positive energy back into our lives.

Does this make sense? Ever since I read this book, my thinking has totally changed. I can now catch myself getting angry or anxious, and I know now to work in positive ways to face my fears and work towards getting my needs met. So, I go to work on that guy in the mirror. Each time I succeed, even if just a little, I build my self-confidence and improve my quality of life.

I believe this perspective on the grief roller coaster is the major reason why I no longer feel the pain of grief. It is up to me to ensure my needs are being met, and it is also up to me to overcome my fears about the future and learn to trust others (and life!) again.

I hope you find this map as helpful as I do. It is one of the major power-tools in my grief recovery toolbox.

The Rollercoaster II

In my last post titled The Rollercoaster, I described the full spectrum of emotional experience we go through as grievers. Tonight I'll complete the picture by explaining how to go from the low energy states to higher ones. It makes perfect sense when you think about it.

What causes the low energy states of anger and anxiety? In a word: stress. The stress can come from outside ourselves or from inside our mind. Let's look at another chart [pg 150]:



According to Dr Paul in his book MindOS™ - "The Operating System of the Human Mind", when the stress is external, anger comes from hurt, and anxiety comes from loss. Both impact our self-esteem. Is it any wonder, then, that as widow/ers, we suffer such a tremendous hit to our self-esteem? A double-whammy of hurt and loss, right between our eyes. Under normal circumstances, if we have a high-enough personal boundary, it can ward off external hurt and loss and can minimize the damage to our self-esteem. However, I believe that everyone is deeply affected by the loss of their spouse, regardless of how well-defined their personal boundary is. The stress is simply too overwhelming.

So, you might be thinking, it is all well and good to know this stuff, but how can I use it to feel better? How do I transform anger into well-being and anxiety into confidence?

First, it helps to understand that once stress is inside our boundary, it manifests in one of two ways: anger stems from our needs not being met, and anxiety arises from a loss of confidence and/or trust [pg 153]:



So, we see that the remedy for anger is to get our needs met, and the remedy for anxiety is to face our fears. I'm going to suggest that in the first year or so of grief, this is easier said than done!

Now that our spouse is dead, we face a huge laundry list of unmet needs. For example:

• Love


• Friends


• Income


• Freedom


• Creativity


• Leisure

And our confidence in ourselves, as well as our trust in God and the very foundations of the world, is shattered. Still, it is helpful to know what steps we need to take to feel better. The journey of the bereaved is one of slowly facing our fears and working towards getting our needs met. Like eating an elephant, we do this one little bite at a time.

For my next post, I'll conclude by showing the only possible reactions to both anger and anxiety, and that should complete our map of the roller coaster. When the next big downswing comes, you'll know exactly where you are. Where you go from there is up to you.

The Rollercoaster

If you've been grieving for any length of time, you probably relate to the title of this post. One minute, you feel yourself plunging down into the depths of despair, wondering how low you can go. The next day, you can feel pretty good, them something goes well and you feel ecstatic for a bit, then something else happens and you're plunging down again. Another analogy is feeling like being bounced around in a big emotional clothes dryer. Sound familiar?

Would it be helpful if you had a map to this rollercoaster? It might be helpful to know when the next big drop is coming, as well as the loop-de-loop around the corner...

I'm about half-way through a very interesting book by Dr Paul Dobransky called MindOS™ - "The Operating System of the Human Mind". He's got lots of very interesting diagrams in there, and several stood out very clearly to me as I recognized what I was looking at — the Grief Rollercoaster!

Dr Paul talks at length about the Spectrum of Negative Emotional Energy. Here's his chart [pg 142]:


He explains that anger and anxiety are opposite emotions, and that other negative emotions are a combination of the two. The benefit to knowing this is that we can learn how to master all negative emotions — we just need to know how to master the two ends of the spectrum, anger and anxiety.

We can learn how to transform these two negative extremes into positive emotional energy, the two ends of which are well-being and confidence [pg 145]:


Now when I saw that chart, I saw instantly the sides of that emotional clothes dryer I had been tumbling around inside of for many months. It made sense to me as I looked at it and thought back over my many trips on the roller coaster. One minute I was feeling anger at my situation, then I did something and had a bit more well-being, then I plunged down into anxiety, then I did something else and felt a wonderful sense of confidence. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

In my next post, I'll explain the causes of both anger and anxiety, as well as what we need to do to transform our negative emotional energies into positive ones.

Grief Stinks Part II

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

— Eric Hoffer

I read something in the last day or two that has stuck with me, and I thought I'd share it as it relates well to my previous post about essential oils, as well as my post about endorphins.

So much of grief in that first critical year or so is about our perceived lack of control. We talk about how grief comes in waves, washing powerfully over us as we struggle to remain upright. I've also read of people who describe those moments as a "grief ambush." Notice that the language here is all in the passive tense. Grief is something that happens to us, it is not something that we do. Grief attacks us or strikes us, hitting us when we least expect it. Both these metaphors portray us the griever as the victim of powerful forces beyond our control. We can certainly feel helpless when gripped by such potent emotions as hopelessness, fear, or despair.

I'm continually amazed at the role biology plays in our lives. I've mentioned previously that some of the biggest aspects of grieving are strictly biological. So, it is really helpful to know that in some ways we can turn the tables on grief, and that understanding a few biology basics can dramatically impact our sense of well-being. When we smile, forced or otherwise, we have no choice — endorphins are released, and the pain is dulled a bit. This is not something we have to think about. We don't say, "gee, I want the pain to go away," and invest a lot of time thinking ourselves better. Instead, we smile, and the pain is dulled. It is a hard-wired circuit, and all we have to do is flip the switch.

Likewise, when we smell an essential oil, our olfactory nerve instantly signals our limbic system (one of the oldest parts of our brain), and our mood is changed. Instantly. We have no choice in the matter. We smell the oil, the circuit is completed, and we feel differently, immediately.

But is it really that simple? Do these "tricks" really work? To answer that, I'll point you to a remarkable website that demonstrates how women in childbirth can use laughter to relieve their pain [discretion advised: explicit birth video]. I plan on using this if I ever pass another kidney stone ;-)

Grief Stinks

Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.

William Shakespeare,
Much Ado about Nothing, Act III. Scene II.

Tonight I thought I'd explain a bit about why I included aromatherapy in my recent post about ways to release endorphins. I do use aromatherapy and I do recommend it highly. Now you might be wondering, what is an ex-infantry Sergeant doing mucking about with essential oils? It was recently suggested to me by a widow friend that I'm quite in touch with my feminine side; I prefer euphemisms like "Balanced." :-P

Anyway, what's the deal with aromatherapy? I was recently reading (I forget quite where) that, going back to our hunter-gatherer heritage, we are hard-wired to be on the scrounge for food every four hours. An interesting result of this is that our olfactory nerve is directly connected to the limbic system in our brain. As you may or may not recall from high school biology, the limbic system is the one responsible for controlling emotions, emotional responses, hormonal secretions, mood, motivation, and pain and pleasure sensations.

And I'm sure you're familiar with "smell memory." I know if I get a whiff of a particular kind of diesel exhaust, I'm instantly transported back in time to the downtown sidewalks of Nicosia Cyprus at 6:30 a.m. I can even describe the exact vehicles as they drove by us while we had our morning run. A more pertinent example of this is the many accounts I have read of widow/ers keeping clothing articles of their dead spouse, just to smell them and be back with their partner, if only for a moment. There's no doubt about it — our sense of smell is very powerful.

So here's where essential oils come in. Pleasing scents can instantly alter our mood to a more pleasant state, at least momentarily. Any time that I'm feeling just the slightest bit "off," I know I can reach for a tiny bottle of eucalyptus oil or lavender or this wonderful oil blend I picked up in Ecuador, and immediately my mood is lifted. Burning incense can achieve similar effects; I particularly like burning tree resins, seeing as I don't have a real fireplace in the house.

I realize that there are all sorts of supposed health benefits from essential oils, and there's a lot of spiritualism / mysticism tied up in them as well. You'll quickly discover, as I did, that those purported health benefits differ tremendously depending on your reference. You can easily find three different "healing effects" for eucalyptus oil in three different books, and I'm sure there are dozens more. So, some healthy skepticism seems to be in order. Still, I'm a big fan of results, and I'll take whatever healthy mood elevators I can.

My advice: next time you're feeling especially down, try smelling a pleasant odour and see if you feel a lift. My own version of aromatherapy is an important tool in my grief recovery toolbox.

Grief Judo

Today turned out to be a heavy day, yet an eminently enjoyable one. I attended an infant baptism for the son of my late wife's cousin. I'll preface this by saying that this was my third baptism as a widower, and the previous two had really messed me up. The first one had been a few months after Deb died, for the child of Deb's co-worker, and all I could think about was how much Deb would have loved to have been there. The second one was 3 months later for her new niece, and I cried through the whole thing, and for most of the rest of the day. It's hard to enjoy a day when it feels like someone is cutting you in half with a sword.

Today, though, I had no apprehensions about attending, even though this one was for the son of Deb's favourite cousin. The ceremony went very well, and I was genuinely happy for the parents and the family. Afterwards, we gathered at the parent's house for an excellent lunch, and I remember distinctly thinking to myself, "baby, you've come a long way."

Of course, the universe seems to wait for moments like that, doesn't it? ;-) Almost like it says, "oh yeah, buddy? You feeling lucky today?" in its best Clint Eastwood voice ;-)

As I was preparing to leave and had started to say my goodbyes, I noticed a man around my age hanging back a bit, but obviously wanting to speak with me. I knew most of the people present, but I didn't know him. After I gave my aunt-in-law a hug goodbye, he came up and introduced himself: "Hi, I'm Dr. S____; I was the one who originally diagnosed Deb and arranged for her hysterectomy."

Gulp. If you've been a widow/er for any length of time, you've probably heard that grief comes in waves, and could I ever sense a 15 footer coming my way, fast! What was I going to do?

A few days prior, a widow I had attended a 10-week closed group with earlier in the year had emailed me and had mentioned that I always seemed to be able to find resources for coping with grief that others hadn't been able to find. I had thought about that comment long and hard and came to the conclusion that, sure, I was able to find a lot of unique resources, but I was motivated to find them.

Several years ago, I had read a really good article by Jim Rohn called "Skills Make Labor More Valuable":

As you know by now, if you have been a long time subscriber to our weekly E-zine, I'm a very big proponent of activity, labor and discipline. In fact I devoted one of the five major pieces to the life puzzle (in my book under the same name) to the subject of activity and labor. But now let me add another key word to the labor equation - skillful. Yes, skillful labor.

We need the skills to help build our family's dreams, the skills to stir up an enterprise and make it successful. We need skills to build equities for the future. We need skills of all kinds.

How about this - skillful language. If you just talk to your family you can hold them all together, but if you skillfully talk to your children you can help them build dreams for the future. That is why I spend so much time at the Weekend Seminar on communication - how to affect others with words.

You can't be lazy in language - it cost too much. What if you meant to say "what's troubling you?" and instead you said "what's wrong with you?". Wow, that's too big a mistake. And sure you could have made that mistake 10 years ago, but not now. You should have gotten much better by now in language and communication.

Skills multiply labors by two, by five, by ten, by fifty, by one hundred times. Hey, you can chop a tree down with a hammer but it takes about 30 days, called labor. But if you trade the hammer in for an ax, you can chop the tree down in about 30 minutes. What's the difference in 30 days and 30 minutes? Skills. Skills made the difference.

So do what you can - labor. But also do the best that you can do – improved skills. And you will find that the labor combined with skills will start producing miracles. Miracles with your money, miracles with your family and miracles in every part of your life.

After Deb died, and once I had recognized that I was grieving, I was determined to become skilled in grieving. I wasn't going to be wailing away with a hammer 30 years from now trying to fell this tree of grief. No, I was going to become a master griever, a Black Belt, if you like. And that thought really propelled me in my search for the best tools and skills to help me grieve really well.

Fast-forward to today: I could feel the wave of grief crash over me, but this time I wasn't broken, floored, or floundering. It was almost like an impromptu Black Belt test: think fast; what are you going to do?

I'm a firm believer that my body knows how to grieve, and I just need to let it do its thing, and be fine with that. As the grief wave hit, I could feel all kinds of things going on with my body, but it was almost like I mentally just stepped aside and let all that energy pass me by, like a judo master stepping aside a split second before the bigger, stronger, tougher opponent plows into him.

The Doctor and I had a great chat about his practice, the latest advancements in cervical cancer prevention, and I purposely prolonged the conversation to see just how far I could go. I told him at the end of 20 minutes that I couldn't have had this conversation 6 months ago.

My body continued working through the grief for a good hour or so afterwards; I fumbled things I was carrying, and I was a bit more preoccupied and distracted than usual. But mentally, I saw no reason to get involved. My mind just needed to get out of the way and let my body grieve.

Today was a milestone.

How to Let Go

Letting go. Sounds simple, doesn't it? You can't read a book about grieving without tripping over this admonishment at least once. Isn't letting go the whole purpose of the funeral? I mean, she's already six feet under — how much further do I need to let her go? Eight feet? Ten?

Of course, we're not talking about physically letting go, although for those of us who still sleep curled up with their loved one's favourite sweater or robe, the understanding is certainly that, at some point, this physical reminder will need to be released. Part of the reason we feel so terrible in the first place is because of this physical separation, and our cold-turkey withdrawal symptoms do dissipate in time.

No, when reading or hearing about "letting go," we understand that there's a lot of mental, emotional, and spiritual releasing that we need to do. But are any of us so well-versed in managing our emotions that we can get on with the necessary releasing unaided?

Especially for us guys, if you ask us how we feel, you'll likely encounter a similar response to that which you'd receive if you had asked us about our preference for chartreuse or fuschia — huh? Guys aren't supposed to have feelings; we think, not feel, right? If we as widowers are a bit more in touch with our feminine side, we still probably don't understand why we feel as we do. And widows don't seem to be any better equipped to release all these deep emotions either. If anything, the data suggests it takes women longer to release their dead spouse than it does for men.

So, where do we go from here?

A major tool in my grief recovery toolbox is The Sedona Method, a book I can't speak highly enough of. It is also available as a course in audio and video formats. The subtitle says it all: "Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Emotional Well-Being." Peace and emotional well-being — that is something I homed in on. To me, I desperately needed that key to unlocking these two elements so totally lacking from my life.

Peace and emotional well-being. Two concepts totally antithetical to grief, yet the very objects of our desire. How can a book promise on the front cover to deliver the very essence of what we seek?

The Sedona Method is not light reading. I'm still reading it a year and a half after I bought it, and I have found it to be immensely helpful, not just in unraveling my grief, but in every aspect of my life. It has helped me to understand what motivates me, why I feel what I feel, and how to let those feelings go.

A critical turning point for me was understanding that I am not my emotions. I had always felt as one with my emotions, that they were a part of my identity. The very notion of letting go of my emotions seemed to suggest that I give up a fundamental part of being me. The following excerpt from The Sedona Method [pp 36-7] illustrates how I was able to let go of this idea:

Let me explain by asking you to participate in a simple exercise. Pick up a pen, a pencil, or some small object that you would be willing to drop without giving it a second thought. Now, hold it in front of you and really grip it tightly. Pretend this is one of your limiting feelings and that your hand represents your gut or your consciousness. If you held the object long enough, this would start to feel uncomfortable yet familiar.

Now, open your hand and roll the object around in it. Notice that you are the one holding on to it; it is not attached to your hand. The same is true with your feelings, too. Your feelings are as attached to you as this object is attached to your hand.

We hold on to our feelings and forget that we are holding on to them. As I stated in the Introduction, it's even in our language. When we feel angry or sad, we don't usually say, "I feel angry," or, "I feel sad." We say, "I am angry, or, "I am sad." Without realizing it, we are misidentifying that we are the feeling. Often, we believe a feeling is holding on to us. This is not true... we are always in control and just don't know it.

Now, let the object go.

What happened? You let go of the object, and it dropped to the floor. Was that hard? Of course not. That's what we mean when we say "let go."

You can do the same thing with any emotion — choose to let it go.

Now, there's obviously a lot more to the method than this simple example, and there's a reason the book is 415 pages. However, if the passage above gave you even a glimmer of hope, please do yourself a favour and grab a copy as soon as you can. You'll be very glad you did.

Letting Go

As my grief journey progressed, I came to realize that the end, the destination if you like, of this journey was to be at peace. Asking questions like "why did my wife die at 32 years of age, leaving me with a 2-year old son?" resulted in nothing but more fruitless questions. But we, as humans, are questioning beings. The secret seemed to lie in changing the nature of the questions — rather than "why?" I started asking "how" questions. How could I be at peace with her sickness and death? How could I be OK with everything that had happened? How could I get on with the business of living? How could I heal?

And an even more powerful line of questioning began with "what." In the throes of the waves of grief that washed over me, I clung like a shipwrecked survivor to a single powerful plank: "What could I do right now to help me be more at peace?" The answer to that question lay more often than not in the simple things: listen to peaceful music; light a candle; sit quietly on the couch; light some incense or smell some essential oils; get into some comfortable clothes. Asking what I could do at this moment to be at peace almost always led me to my 5 senses, and I did find some solace there. I had read that it is important for grievers to live in the present, and focusing on my five senses helped to ground myself in the present, if only for a moment. I was glad that I had found some readily-accessible shelter from the storms lashing at me. I took that shelter until I could venture out a little further down the road.

I have learned much from reading books about grieving, and one I highly recommend is called How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies. It was in reading this book that I finally understood what grieving is: the freeing up of the emotional energy associated with my past life as a married person. All that emotional investment had to be let go and released so that I could get on with life. The tricky part, especially for a guy, was twofold: one, how did I get a handle on my emotions, and two, how did I release them?